The tire industry is one of the leading industries in the world. As such, it stands to reason that the tire making process can be a highly sophisticated process in which much of the assembly process is automated. Several prior art attempts have been made to improve the production of tires and improve the individual steps and processes involved therein.
Generally, the tire making process involves the formation of a carcass, which can also be referred to as a casing, which is the foundation for the tread, belts, bead, and sidewalls of the finished tire. The carcass is processed and these other items are added until the formation of a green tire is complete. The green tire is then vulcanized, or cured, to solidify and bond the various components of the tire resulting in a finished tire product.
The step that is of interest in the current disclosure is the transformation from the carcass stage to the green tire stage. This may involve rotating the carcass on chucks and applying various materials, such as the tread, to the carcass. During this process, normally the internal portion of the carcass is pressurized to maintain the generally cylindrical shape of the carcass during the application of the tread, bead, belt and other features to the carcass. Additionally, the carcass may have a snug fit around the chucks. As such, the use of prior art chucks may result in some degree of difficulty in placing the carcass on the chucks and removing the carcass from the chucks.
Prior attempts to alleviate these difficulties include the development of chucks that have expandable and retractable diameters. These chucks include an overall diameter that can collapse inside the internal circumference of the carcass during placement and removal of the carcass and expand out to engage the internal diameter of the carcass during the manufacturing process.
Other attempts to address these difficulties have included the use of lubrication around the surfaces of the chucks. The lubrication is typically applied in a liberal manner to ease the positioning and removal of the carcass on the chucks. This use of lubrication may result in an untidy work area and potentially undue wear and tear on the processing equipment and work stations around the processing equipment.
Other prior art attempts to address these difficulties have included chuck systems having an internal bladder positioned on the processing machine to expand and engage the carcass once the carcass is positioned on the processing machine. This normally requires complicated machinery and failures may be experienced due to the additional elements in the processing machine and the potential failure of the bladders themselves in their expansion and retraction process.
What is needed then is a single chuck, or a chuck system having two or more chucks, that may be used in the processing of toroidal structures such as tire that facilitates the placement of the toroidal structure on the chuck and the removal of the toroidal structure from the chuck(s). Typically, this system requires minimal to no lubrication.